All Recipes, Inc.

Thanksgiving is a holiday with lots of moving parts. From ambitious cooking experiments to dealing with in-laws to mapping Black Friday shopping strategies, it can be a stressful day. We’ve compiled a few apps that might help make your Turkey Day a good one. If you’re on a budget, the AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner app (Free) is a great pick for planning your Thanksgiving meal. The app includes hundreds of Thanksgiving recipes, including Green Bean Casserole, Candied Sweet Potatoes, and plenty of recipes for that perfect Turkey. AllRecipes.com is also useful because you can see user ratings, which makes it easier to pick the best recipes. You’ll find even more recipes by upgrading to AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner Pro ($2.99). The free version contains ads. If you’ve ever hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in your home you know that it’s no small feat.  There’s the guest list to consider.  The menu – are any of your guests allergic to anything or is someone a vegan?  What types of drinks will you serve?  You can create your shopping list and most importantly, a budget for this spectacular feast.  The iHost:  Thanksgiving sounds like a life-saver.  It will help you organize and plan your Thanksgiving get together while keeping you sane.  $0.99 Who doesn’t love a good joke? – especially if your kids are telling them.  These kid-friendly Thanksgiving jokes are a great way to let your children entertain family and friends during the Thanksgiving Day festivities.  Or you can tell the jokes to your little ones that can’t read yet.  It’s free so no harm in checking it out. This fun app allows you to take (or use one from your album) a photo and place it on 1 of 4 turkey bodies.  Write something amusing and you’ll have a funny Thanksgiving card to send to family and friends.  Note:  They do not recommend using it on iPhone 2.2 (low-resolution in finished card) $0.99 From Ace Hardware to Walmart this app has deals searchable from store to category. You can add items to a shopping list or post it to your Facebook wall to spread the love. Equipped with pictures and slashed out numbers to prove your deal, it has a bit of everything for the frugalista in all of us. Stuck travelling this holiday season? Make sure you get the cheapest prices on gasoline. This app automatically finding your location, then lists off the Read More

It’s that wonderful time of year when the weather gets warmer, the days get longer and people generally seem to be much happier. Yes friends, it’s summer time and we’re here to help you make the most of it. Over this series, we’ll take a look at how smartphones, apps and accessories can maximize your summer fun. We’re going to tackle how your mobile devices can help you travel and enjoy your vacation, cook or BBQ, get the most out of a roadtrip and XYZ. Today, we’ll take a close look at Cooking and BBQ. It’s all about good organization, making sure there’s enough food for everyone. Shopping list apps could help a lot here. If you’re an iPhone user, you’ll appreciate ShopShop – it’s super simple, yet powerful shopping list app that remembers your previous purchases making future entries a snap. I love it and I’m hoping an Android version will be released soon. In the meantime, I’m using GTasks both for tasks and shopping list, relying on Google Calendar to add new items (I have 2 lists – “tasks” and “shopping list”). Then on my Android smartphone I access the list from the homescreen, thanks to the GTasks’ handy widget. On the other hand, you may go for a dedicated BBQ shopping list app like BBQ Planner for Android, which comes pre-populated with more than 360 items needed for barbecue. You can easily check, uncheck and reuse items for every barbecuing trip, saving some time along the way. This one’s for iPhone users, only. Touted as the “first photorealistic cooking simulation game,” BBQ Pro – iGrill will help you prepare for the big day. You assume the role of grill master at a party full of hungry people, and it’s your job to keep them happy by serving up perfectly grilled hot dogs and steaks, among many other food items available. It’s fun and addictive game which has been downloaded by more than a million people so far. BBQ Pro will definitely keep you entertained for some time. Moreover, you may learn a trick or two while playing… There are quite a few recipes app out there, some of which are *really* awesome. Aside from the “general” ones (which go beyond BBQ recipes) like Epicurious and AllRecipes Dinner Spinner (Pro version is here), you can try BBQ-specific titles such as Weber’s On the Grill and iBBQ. Weber’s On the Read More

posted by D. St. Charles on Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 2:07 pm.   I admit I lead a semi-charmed kind of life. But I’m sure I’m not alone when I admit one of the most dreaded decisions I face on a daily basis is what to cook for dinner. I enjoy cooking (eating, anyways) but sometimes I get into a rut. I know it’s bad when I find myself staring blankly at my refrigerator and my eyes are drawn to the school lunch menu in search of inspiration. Searching food websites or flipping through magazines replete with glossy photos of impossibly difficult dishes containing unobtainable ingredients surprisingly does not make the task any easier, or fun.  However, take all the information and distill it into an iPad app and I’m so there.  Last week, Allrecipes.com, the website with over 44,000 recipes and a membership of over 3.6 million users, released a new free cooking app, Allrecipes – Your Kitchen Inspiration.  Read my review after the jump… The social food networking site has already released apps for the iPhone and iPod (AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner) for menu planning on the fly, but this is its first iPad offering that actually aids in the preparation.  The search starts at the “Inspire Me” screen where the user can select a course, main ingredient, cooking method and cooking time.  (The main ingredient pop-up surprised me.  When searching for a dinner recipe, the fourteen button grid of primary ingredient choices did not list turkey as a potential protein.  Legumes and lamb, but no turkey?).  Once the aspiring chef has narrowed down the possibilities, photos both amateur and professional drop down from which to choose.  I chose Beef Tenderlion with Easy Cranberry Balsamic Sauce.  Here’s where the app gets really interesting. The recipe card in the upper left corner provides nutritional information, the ability to scale the recipe (up to 300 servings!), create shopping lists and email the recipe for easy access on the iPhone for when it’s time to go shopping.  In the upper right corner are members’ reviews which offer more than the random “yummy!” comment and provide actual tips and tweaks.  The next step is to start cooking.  The layout here is practical and well thought out.  Each step is highlighted as you go along, and font size is adjustable so one can read the directions from a few feet away, which is ideal since iPads and ceramic Read More

Anyone who has prepared a Thanksgiving family dinner knows that the emotional minefield is laid long before the turkey goes in the oven. I speak of the annual quandary over whose recipe to use. Is it going to be Mom’s pumpkin pie or your mother-in-law’s? Either way, you risk offending half the family. That’s reason to give thanks for apps like Allrecipes and Epicurious, which offer terrific recipes and bring a Swiss-like neutrality to the Thanksgiving kitchen. Of course, neutrality isn’t the best reason to use these apps; there are the crowd-pleasing recipes they contain and and the fact that both apps having been reworked for the iPad, which, aside from the stove and refrigerator, may be the best device in the kitchen. Certainly you can print recipes off the Internet, or use these apps on your iPhone, but I’d say the iPad is the superior kitchen companion. It won’t curl up while cooking, and it’s big enough to read easily (just watch the marinara). Each of the apps has something to recommend. Epicurious, which came out for the iPad in April, offers more than 28,000 recipes culled from the much-missed Gourmet magazine, Bon Appetit and Web-exclusive recipes from chefs and cookbook authors. Allrecipes, just released for the iPad, offers more than 40,000 recipes from what the app likes to call “home chefs,” meaning cooks like you and me. Allrecipes offers more populist fare than you’ll find on Epicurious. If you want a turducken or Strawberry Jello Mousse, the decision is made for Allrecipes. Allrecipes also has a flashier layout, with reviews, the recipe and ingredients all on one page. But that means you have to scroll to see the full texts in each section, which means smearing the screen with food-encrusted fingers. The app features an “inspire me” page where you list the ingredients you want to use and what kind of meal you want to prepare, then a cascade of photos show you random meals that fit the bill. Or you can use the more restricted advanced search that lets you include or exclude specific ingredients (hold the anchovies), and to add dietary restrictions, like vegan or low carb. You can also set a limit to the time you want to be in the kitchen. The app lets you import ingredients to a shopping list and to create a recipe box of favorites. You can also link the app Read More

How to Cook Everything turns the book of the same name into a killer app for the kitchen. Believe it or not, my stomach is looking forward to the arrival of my iPad (hurry up, UPS!) just as much as my brain. That's because I can envision the tablet on my kitchen counter (sitting upright in a dirt-cheap stand, of course), serving up page after page of delicious recipes, each with tantalizing photos and large, easy-to-read text. In the meantime, I'm making due with my iPhone (or my wife's iPod Touch--whatever's closer). The print may be a little small, but the cooking/recipe apps are first-rate. Here's a list of my five favorites: AllRecipes.com Dinner Spinner  An oldie but goodie, Dinner Spinner taps thousands of recipes from the popular site (home of some of my favorite chocolate-chip cookie recipes, FYI). You can search the library for specific recipes or use the "spinner" to browse by dish type, ingredients, or prep time. The app is free, though you may want to spring for the $2.99 ad-free Pro version. Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List  Stocked with a whopping 28,000 recipes from leading magazines, cookbooks, and chefs, this app almost crosses over into overkill. Search for something generic like "cookies," for instance, and you'll likely end up overwhelmed by the one-recipe-per-page results. Still, I love being able to browse, search, save, and e-mail (a new feature in the just-released 2.0 version) all the recipes. And, hey, it's a freebie, so what do you have to lose? Become a master of the coals with the 99-cent Grill-It! app. Grill-It!  I'll cop to being pretty clueless when it comes to manning the grill. This app from online magazine GrillingCompanion.com teaches you everything you need to know about flame-broiling burgers, dogs, chicken, veggies, and just about everything else. The info is solid (and helpful), but the interface has the annoying habit of cutting off recipe titles. "Tips on How to Cook Perfect...", for example. Perfect what?! Price: 99 cents. Martha's Everyday Food  My wife and I subscribe to (and enjoy) the print edition of "Martha's Everyday Food," so we jumped at the chance to get the recipe library in app form. Just one problem: although you can search Martha's database, you can't browse it! That's a rather stunning oversight in an otherwise worthwhile app, which includes a convenient grocery-list builder and a dinner recipe of the day. Price: Read More

by Luke Knowles is the founder of numerous money-saving websites including Coupon Sherpa, Gift Card Granny and Mr. Free Stuff. In 2008 Luke founded Free Shipping Day, now a red-letter discount date for online holiday shopping. Despite a recession allegedly in our rear view mirror, frugality remains a hot, dare I say trendy topic. Nowhere is that more evident than in the often expensive world of consumer tech. Those of you currently debating that iPad purchase know just what I mean. But remember, a one-time splurge could pay dividends in the long run if you do your homework. Take Steve Jobs’ previous technological wonder. The iPhone’s price tag might seem hefty, but just a cursory review of its money-saving potential might prove tempting to even the most fiscally conservative. Here are ten of our favorite apps for the frugal-focused. The first step to saving money is learning how to handle it. Depending on your needs, there are literally hundreds of apps to help you manage your money, track expenses and pay bills. You can use your iPhone to make late fees and overdrafts a thing of the past. Existing Quicken users as well as newbies will no doubt find this simple but handy app the ideal way to check financial accounts on the go. Track your financial goals, monitor account activity and even find an ATM. One of the most popular bill tracking apps out there, the interface is simple, sleek and easy to use. Plus, you can back up your data and export via e-mail for added peace of mind. Enable push notifications to make sure you never miss a due date. Once you’ve got your accounts balanced, it might be time to start spending (wisely). But a note to the coupon clippers: Now you can leave that Sunday circular at home. Coupon Sherpa offers both in-store coupons (just show the entry at checkout) as well as exclusive deals just for users. You can search by category or store name, locate merchants closest to you, and even e-mail coupons to your friends. (Disclosure: the author is the founder of Coupon Sherpa.) Scribbling down grocery lists is so 2006. Meticulous shoppers can now download apps to manage their grocery needs, ensuring every discounted item is accounted for. This one allows users to upload and share lists while offering additional frugal options like price comparisons and coupons. The recession has taught even Read More

Allrecipes.com is a wonderful resource for anyone looking for great recipe ideas or just general cooking advice. They've released an iPhone app as well that gives users the ability to search through their massive online collection of recipes, upload and store their own, and create shopping lists for ingredients. When the app initially opens, you are presented with a spinner very similar to the one found in the Urban Spoon app. This spinner will help you decide a meal randomly if you're not sure exactly what you are looking for. Once a recipe is found, tapping on it will bring up the ingredients and instructions, as well as any reviews or comments made by other users. One amazing feature in this app is the cooking mode. If a user decides to use a recipe, turning the phone to landscape will drown out everything but the steps needed to complete the process. Users can also add a recipe to the recipe box along with their own recipes via the online website so they will always have them on hand. The app's overall design is extremely clean and simple, perfect for finding what you want. If you find a recipe that you absolutely enjoyed, it can also be shared via bluetooth or email and can then automatically add the ingredients into the in-app shopping list. Overall the app was perfect for the kitchen and totally worth the money for the full version. Check it out. Visit Appolicious for more iPhone app reviews and articles. Read More

Allrecipes, which bills itself as “the world’s Number One food site,” has taken its iPhone recipe application and, apologies to Emeril Lagasse, kicked it up a notch. Called Allrecipes Dinner Spinner Pro, the new app adds unlimited access to the complete Allrecipes library, including 40,000 dishes you don’t get with the free version. The app also added the feature most requested by users, the ability to save favorite entrees to a personal recipe box. The app helps you plan a menu using three spinning slot machine wheels, like the ones in Urbanspoon. The first lets you choose the type of food you plan to prepare, like breakfast, main course or appetizer. The second lets you choose an ingredient like shellfish or vegetables. And the third wheel lets you set completion time. So choose a breakfast with cheese to be made in less than 20 minutes and you get a selection including tuna cream cheese omelets and cottage cheese pancakes. The app speeds shopping by letting you add all of the ingredients from several recipes to a single shopping list. It would be nice if there were an express button to create lists, but you have to hit the menu in the upper right and choose among adding it to the shopping list, adding it to your recipe box or sharing by e-mail or Bluetooth. Sharing recipes by Bluetooth is also a new feature exclusive to the $2.99 Pro version. The app scales recipes to any number of servings you choose, which is especially nice for single cooks. Turning the phone horizontally puts step-by-step instructions in easy-to-read white type on a black background. A touch arrow takes you to the next instruction, reducing the food smudges you’d get on your phone if you had to swipe the page with a food-covered finger. While there is a  variety of tasty dishes, vegetarians will be disappointed. Looking under main dishes with vegetable ingredients turns up meaty entrees like Easy Sausage Scramble and Beef Burger Pie. Read More

AllRecipes is “going Pro” with a new iPhone app called Dinner Spinner Pro. Available for $2.99 in the AppStore, the application allows users to access the complete Allrecipes.com recipe library, add recipes to personal Recipes Boxes, create shopping lists, share recipes, upload photos to AllRecipes.com, and more. The original Dinner Spinner app was launched back in December 2008 and has been downloaded for more than 2.8 million times to date. The paid app builds on the free version with additional features, as described above. The new game in town is iPad and AllRecipes wants its share of the action. The company will be releasing a special optimized-for-a-large-screen application for Apple’s tablet. AllRecipes’ president, Lisa Sharples, thinks that the iPad will be a “killer” device in the kitchen. Their own survey suggests something similar — one out of five people bring their laptop into the kitchen to access recipes. Now imagine if you could bring something lighter and smaller which is eventually protected against spills onto keyboard… Wouldn’t that be of a great help? Dinner Spinner Pro ($2.99) [iTunes link] Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis. Read More

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More Cooking and recipe community Allrecipes is launching a new iPhone app for pro users today, called Dinner Spinner Pro. The app, which costs $2.99 in the App Store, allows users to access the complete Allrecipes.com recipe library, add recipes directly to personal Recipes Boxes, create interactive shopping lists, and more. Allrecipes launched a free iPhone app last year which has seen 2.8 million downloads. Based on the popularity of this app and requests by users to be able to save recipes, Allrecipes decided to launch a paid version with additional features. Cooks on the go can locate recipes, save recipes to personal Recipe Boxes, rate recipes, share recipes and upload mobile images to Allrecipes. The app also includes a shopping list feature which aggregates ingredients across recipes and allows users to virtually check off items while shopping. Interestingly, the iPad may breathe new life into cooking and recipe apps. While reading recipes on the iPhone and other mobile devices while cooking can be tough; the iPad’s large screen almost simulates a digital cook book. And we all know that the iPad will be used as an e-book, allowing users to download and access cookbooks directly from their device. AllRecipes’ president, Lisa Sharples, agrees that the iPad will be a “killer” device in the kitchen. Accroding to survey’s conducted by AllRecipes, one out of five people bring their laptops into the kitchen to access recipes. But the kitchen is a dangerous place for a laptops, with significant threats of spills onto keyboards. But the iPad could come with protective screens and stands, making it safe to use in the chaos of the kitchen. Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Read More